I am not going to do anything so foolish as to try to tell over again, less vividly, this well-known story. We all remember its outlines, I suppose: the absence of Thomas from Christ’s first meeting with the assembled disciples on Easter evening; the dogged disbelief with which he met their testimony;
Night. All is dark. I can see no sense in things. Thousands are dying of starvation, thousands drowned in floods for no reason. Nations promise one thing and do another. Our leaders mislead us. I feel repressed, restricted. All is dark. The darkness is outside; it is inside, too. In myself I see darkness, failures. I hurt those whom I love. I shout and scream at them. Is there any light?
Humbly I adore Thee, hidden Deity,
Which beneath these figures art concealed from me;
Wholly in submission Thee my spirit hails,
For in contemplating Thee it wholly fails.
Morning awakes, and morn awaking sings;
Light speeds from heaven to earth with glowing wings.
Haste to the tomb! Ye mourners, haste, with glee!
Christ hath arisen, from death’s grim fetters free.
And what, then, on this “our triumphant Holy Day,” should his Life be? What but the sealing to us of all which he had wrought for us? What but the bursting of the bars of our prison-house, the restoration, of our lost Paradise, the opening of the Kingdom of Heaven, the earnest of our endless life?
In springtime, I have seen a daffodil unfold, the pale yellow petals burst from their green sheaths. At the tips of branches I have seen buds, pregnant with life, ready to spring forth. I put my hand to my heart and listen to the dull, pulsating beat driving the blood of life through me. I am alive, I have life.
Sing with your voices,
Sing with your hearts,
Sing with your lips,
Sing with your lives
Resurrection of the Easter-kind is not regeneration, but re-creation. A new miracle of creation establishing Jesus physically as Jesus. The physical body of Jesus. Oh, the implausibility of it all! Could it be that Jesus’ body no longer belonged to this universe? That his physical cells had been translated into a type of body that would be fit—ready to live—in some other world? Some other universe? Another dimension? Visible and tactile in ours, but not of our world?
I am the Christ.
It is I who destroyed death,
who triumphed over the enemy,
who trampled Hades underfoot,
who bound the strong one
and snatched man away to the heights of heaven;
I am the Christ.
Christ’s resurrection is life for the dead, pardon for sinners, glory for the saints. And so the holy prophet invites every creature to the celebration of Christ’s resurrection: we should rejoice, he says, and be glad on this day which the Lord has made.